The 'Join
or Die' woodcut of Benjamin Franklin, from May 9, 1754, warning
what would happen if the colonies did not unite against the French
threat .

There was lingering
hatred between the French and English after the earlier colonial
wars . At the start of King William's War in 1689, the British allies,
the Iroquois, attacked the French
settlement of La Chine near Montreal before
the French were aware that war had been declared.

Louis de Frontenac

The Governor
General of New France, Louis de Frontenac
responded by attacking isolated English settlements with his Indian
allies and holding prisoners for ransom .These raids created a climate
of fear in the colonies and against the Catholic church. The English
felt the Catholic missionaries encouraged the Indians to attack
the Protestant English . One of the most famous French missionaries was father Sébastian Rale (1657-1724). Rale, was a Jesuit missionary and lexicographer who worked among the eastern Abenaki. in the contested Kennebec River region in what is now Maine.Father Rale was widely suspected of inciting the tribe against the English because their settlements and blockhouses encroached on Abenaki land. He was killed by an English expediation against the Indians in 1724.

Death of Father Rale

The frontier war was conducted
without pity or mercy, with scarcely a pretence
of regard for the amenities of civilized warfare.
Neither side was particularly scrupulous, each side kept up a
terrible outcry against the other for doing the
very same thing which it did itself. English writers have held up their
hands in holy horror at the atrocious conduct
of the French in sending savages to burn villages and massacre women and children on the
English border. Yet was it not an English
governor of New York who in 1689 launched
the Iroquois thunderbolt against Canada, one
of the most frightful Indian incursions known
to history ? It does not appear that the conscience of either Puritan or Catholic was in the
slightest degree disturbed by these horrors.
Each felt sure that he was fighting the Devil,
and thought it quite proper to fight him with
his own weapons.

While the French, however, prudently refrained from gross violations of international
law, they were nevertheless quite willing to
incite the Indians to attack the English. Vaudreuil, the governor of and the
Canada, expressly declared that it
was convenient to maintain a secret alliance
with the Indians, since the latter might inflict
much damage upon the English, while the
French could disclaim all responsibility for their
acts. The word guerrilla comes from this era of French and English conflict in the New World, derived from la petite guerreo, a phrase used by Governor Frontenac to describe the strategy of using Indians to raid English settlements.

Indians
allied with the French carry off their English captives . Captives
were usually held for ransom, called 'redeeming' captives at the time. Besides being killed, scalped, raped, etc, one of the greatest English fears was to be taken by Indians and turned into a 'savage.' Rape was not as common as believed as many Indian warriors did not find European women attractive.and rape was seen as deviant behavior in many tribes It was common to torture captives in Indian warfare with flaying,burning, forcing captives to eat severed parts of their own body or being forced to run between two rows of warriors armed with clubs. These attacks caused reprisals from the English and a desire to expel the French who armed the Indians and encouraged such attack. Captivity narratives such as The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682) and John William's The Redeemed Captive(1706) were some of the first 'best sellers' in colonial America.

An account of Peter Williamson who was captured by Indians from his Pennsylvania farmhouse in 1754 yet managed to escape and fight in many battles in the French and Indian War

Most Indian attacks on frontier settlers were hit and run raids. Settlers would usually construct a stockade in the area they could run to to outwait an indian attack

Since the end of King
George's War in 1748, both France and England desired to expand
into the rich Ohio River Valley, which was formally unclaimed by
either side . The British established the Ohio Company to develop
trade in the area. The French regarded this as an attempt to claim
the entire area and sent in troops and built forts to prevent the
British from settling the area .There were also tensions among the
Acadians in Nova Scotia . The French built forts which the British
felt violated the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1748.

causes
of the French and Indian War

The French
were also encouraging the Acadians, a French speaking people
who found themselves under British rule as a result of the treaty
in 1713, to agitate for independence .

King George
II (1683-1760) relied on the advice of his ministers such as William
Pitt. The global victories during his reign would establish England
as a major world power.

The English had numerous
advantages over the French when the war began. One was the alliance
between the English and the Iroquois, which was made up of the six Indian
nations of the Cayuga, Seneca,Onondaga, Oneida Mohawk and
the Tuscarora. England was stronger as a naval power and English
settlers outnumbered French settlers greatly , with the English
having over a million settlers in its 13 colonies and France having
an estimated 60,000 on the St. Lawrence River and 6,000 on the Gulf
coast . The British had about 2,500 regular troops in North America
in 1754 .Many of the troops that were to fight in the war were colonial
militia troops raised in America .Most males between the ages of
16 and 60 were members of a local militia .In 1759, there were roughly
17,000 provincial troops enlisted. they were not as disciplined
or well trained as British regular troops .

King Louis
XV (1710-1774) was destined not to maintain the empire established
by his great grand father Louis XIV

The French held an
extensive system of forts in the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes region.
Unlike the English settlers with their independent local governments
which were difficult to organize in time of war, the French had
a single royal system of command . The French, having less settlements
than the English , came into less conflict with the Indians and
were able to establish a strong network of Indian allies . French
trappers, hunters and traders were at home in the forests where
many of the battles of the war would be fought and developed tactics
suited to the wilderness . the uniformed French troops in New France
at the start of the war were the Compagnies Franches de la Marine,
marines because New France was under the administration of the French
Navy .The French troops wore white and blue uniforms. Many of the
French officers were familiar with frontier warfare and had served
in outposts in the wilderness .The French often attacked with mixed
parties of Canadian militia and Indian allies, led by regular officers
and regular soldiers . They were able to combine European organization
with the Indians knowledge of the land and stealth to great effect
.As in the English colonies, most men aged 16 to 60 served in the
local militia .In 1750 the militia totaled around 13,000 men .

coin of New France. The livre was the currency of New France. New France currency also made extensive use of paper money

France had penetrated
deeply into the interior of North America through such noteworthy
explorations as Samuel de Champlain in the Great Lakes and Robert
Cavalier La Salle who reached the Gulf of Mexico by going down the
Mississippi River in 1682. Captain de la Verendrye established trading
forts on the Canadian prairie and went as far west as Wyoming by
the 1730s . Unlike England, France had few costal cities and forts
in North America, except for the naval base of Louisbourg,
built in 1720 and Mobile and New Orleans . The mainstay of New France
was the fur trade, which was maintained through a wide network of
forts from the gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico .

Whipped to a frenzy
by the French, the Iroquois were cutting a swath of desolation from New
York to Virginia. Terrified settlers banded together, no match for the
Indians' cunning. Cabins were burned, entire families massacred,
victims scalped, captives tortured. Yet, in the end, the Iroquois would
pay the highest price.

handsome book extensively illustrated with paintings, sketches, and
colour photographs of important sites and artifacts relating to the
war, historian Ron Dale offers a narrative encompassing all sides of
the conflict and important sites and fortifications.